Climate change, Global warming, Deforestation, terms we have often heard. But what has the world done to check this problem? Forget the world, what have we done for it. Our morning coffee, the clothes we wear, and every inch of travel by a motorised vehicle adds more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Forest fires and deforestation destroys around thousands of hectares of forest and the flora & fauna of our earth is decreasing every second. A data revealed that one football pitch of forest was lost every second in the year 2017 ( Article linked below in sources). The economic centric definition of development which we conceive as something which increases GDP needs to be changed. Draft EIA2020 is an example of how irresponsible and blind world leaders have become.
“So what, should we stop drinking coffee and travelling and stop wearing any clothes?”
Well as much as it would help the climate, that’s not a very practical solution. What if there was a way to help plant more trees without you planting any? What if you can just by searching randomly on a browser help plant more and more trees all around the world and help the climate with just moving your fingers? Ecosia is taking care of this.
We are talking about a search engine that plants trees all over the world with our help, we just have to search.
• Ecosia is a Berlin-based company that donates 80% of its income generated through ad revenues to non-profitable organisations that focuses on reforestation.
• Till this moment, they have planted 109,317,800 saplings (and counting as we write this), they have over 9000 planting sites all over the world with 15 million active users and 12 million euros already invested.
• In August 2020, they have earned a revenue of 1.5 million euros, and 2.7 million trees were financed over Madagascar, Morocco, Ghana, Brazil, Kenya, and many more.
• They publish their monthly financial reports to ensure transparency between the user and the company. They show the exact amount of revenue generated from our searches and what percentage of that money has been spent towards trees.
• 50 million trees were planted as of 2019, which means around 2.5 million tonnes of CO2 was removed from the atmosphere and 6000 hectares were restored.
• Last year around 1.2 million hectares of land Pantanal was lost in a forest fire and vast areas of vegetation were lost causing the deaths of various animals. Ecosia planted around 3.5 million trees in Brazil and paid for another 6.5 million trees. They also invested 318,712 euros for firefighting. In 2020, they signed and committed to 9.5 million more trees in Brazil.
• Ecosia was the first German company to become a corporation because of its social business model.
• June 2019 saw a planting milestone where 60 million trees were planted and in that same year, Ecosia builds its very own solar energy plant to power every search.
• The Ecosia Podcast is a radio show broadcasted twice a week where they talk about why and how to grow trees. Millions of farmers listen to it, interact with the experts on the show. Many of them send text messages and questions and they also run a call center where people can contact to gain information and resolve their queries.
• They also have their own completely recyclable merchandise which includes, t-shirts, tote bags, jumpers and hoodies, etc which can be remade into other products after recycling. All the profit earned through the selling of these products goes directly towards one of their reforestation projects. They are made up of organic cotton and printed in the UK in a renewable energy powered factory.
Climate change is one of the major threats looming upon us and in these times, there is a company that has set up a sustainable model and has shown the world that modernisation and development can be done without harming mother nature. Both can go hand in hand.
As you finish reading this, Ecosia would have planted 5000 more trees all over the world.
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